


Holding the Moment

by Hokuto



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Dark, Gen, Minor Character(s), Minor Violence, Nightmares, Pre-Canon, Time War, Tragedy, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-11
Updated: 2010-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-06 04:33:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/pseuds/Hokuto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Time War is wrapping up and the Doctor's got a job to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holding the Moment

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I basically had no choice but to write totally self-indulgent Time War fic. NO CHOICE. I mean, c'mon, that list of beings the Doctor rattles off in End of Time part 2 was like a laundry list of things Hokuto would like to see! SO HERE GOES.
> 
> This probably contradicts canon a bit because I am too lazy to hunt down the movie with the Eighth Doctor and Nine is kind of my favorite anyway. Version with a bit more color to it (also, working html) available [here](http://brief-transit.livejournal.com/70811.html)!

(The Master died in the warhead's explosion, no time to regenerate. The Doctor could never quite forgive the Brigadier, and their previous friendly bickering cooled into formality and malicious malingering. A year later the Doctor took too much time analyzing an organic sample and Benton came back from the field, his face wet with tears but calm, telling him half of UNIT had been lost. The Brigadier gone, Jo gone, Yates gone, too many others gone. There was probably a lesson in this, the Doctor thought after he had shut himself and Benton both up in the TARDIS for safety's sake, but he was too tired now to figure it out.)

(Nero caught Barbara. He had her dress half off when the Doctor found them, and she was crying. The Doctor didn't know which surprised him more, her presence in the palace or the disgust that momentarily possessed him.

Roman history went a little knotty for a few years before sorting itself out, but the Doctor could never bring himself to regret the sharp exclamation - "Emperor! What sort of behavior is this?" - that had given Barbara time to hit Nero over the head with what turned out to be a very heavy vase indeed. Bother Roman history anyway; Nero was rather less charming in person than in his biographies, and that took quite some doing.)

(They had gotten Adric off the ship just in time, maybe the closest call the Doctor had had in all his hundreds of years of close calls, and unable to contain himself the Doctor was hugging him, promising over and over that they could go back to E-Space if Adric wanted or anywhere else he fancied and they'd never have such a quarrel again, never, all the silly things humans promised in these situations. Adric gave him a clear-eyed look and said, "Are you sure that last promise is a good idea, Doctor?" The Doctor just laughed in relief, and in his hearts realized that he no longer knew how far he would go to keep Adric safe and always with him.)

A familiar black plunger latched onto the shifting landscape of the Neverwere and a thousand impossible Doctors rippled like disturbed water, vanishing.

"EX-TER-MIN-ATED," said the Dalek on the Doctor's right, and raised its plunger high as if satisfied with itself.

"Thank you," the Doctor said automatically, and then did a double-take because a Dalek's plunger should be on _its_ right, not his...

Two plungers. It had two plungers. Also, it had just saved him from a Neverwere, which was fantastic but also not supposed to happen.

What is was will be supposed to happen?

"I'm sorry," he said, feeling his face stretch in an unwarranted grin - smiling with fear, all that human contact had rubbed off on him a bit too much - "I think we must be a bit mixed up. I'm the Doctor, and usually I save people from Daleks, not the other way around."

"YES," the Dalek said, offering no further explanation.

The Doctor stood up and dusted off the worst of the ash from his jacket, and took a good long look at the Dalek. Two plungers, that was familiar... "Hang on," he said, "I've seen you before, you were with the Skaro Degradations, weren't you?"

The Dalek swiveled its eyestalk around to stare at him and said, "YES. I AM DALEK KENT, MY UNIT WAS PART OF THE SKARO EVOLVED SPECIAL FORCES AND I WAS ITS COM-MANDER."

"A pleasure to meet you, Dalek Kent," the Doctor said, because courtesies on a battlefield were an irresistible irony. "You were commander, you say? What happened?"

"I HAD WHAT IS CALLED A NIGHT-MARE," Dalek Kent said, and its plungers drooped. "MY SUPER-IORS SAID I COULD NO LONGER BE A COM-MANDER."

"I see," said the Doctor, though primarily what he saw was a scouting party of Meanwhiles in their hissing static coats (_cheapen the remains of the universe's origin a bit more, why don't you, King?_), and another Neverwere at their head flickering through Gallifreys. "Well, Dalek Kent, one good turn deserves another -"

but Adric you could have saved him he was there right there you had him in your arms and _you could have saved him_

"- so let me ask you, how fast can you run?"

"MY MOBILITY IS WITHIN STANDARD OPERATIONAL PARAMETERS."

"Fantastic. Run!"

Away they went over the burnt fields of Gallifrey, and Dalek Kent did indeed have a good turn of speed for a giant metal can. The red grass, razed short by the war, crunched under the Doctor's feet; it was streaked blue and green in places where a Neverwere had stood too long, darkened with ash in others. Behind them the Doctor heard the static grow louder and the Meanwhiles calling to each other, _bzip bzip bzip_, and he jumped a trench and fell promptly into the deeper one beyond it, getting damp ash all over himself.

He picked himself up and saw Kent hovering over him at the edge of the trench and shouted, "Get down here, we'll follow this for a bit then go up again and lose them in the foothills," what did he think he was doing, shepherding around a Dalek? The Neverwere had really gotten to him if even a Dalek with two plungers was somehow a comfort...

"I OBEY," Dalek Kent said, floating to the bottom of the trench - deep enough to hide them both, little mercies - and they took off again. Red grass underfoot, orange sky above, a smoking mockery of itself; not for the first time recently the Doctor thought that to all the new creatures of the war Gallifrey must seem as if it had always been burning, with all its red. Wrong, wrong, _wrong_, but you couldn't tell the generation of soldiers that red was the color of peace and hide-and-seek and the nights you spent with Koschei staring up at the sky and talking about where and when you'd go once you got your own TARDIS.

"WHY DO WE NOT STOP AND EX-TER-MIN-ATE THE ENEMY," said Dalek Kent.

The Doctor didn't want to argue with a Dalek over the subtle nuances in the different heartbreaks of knowing what could never have been versus knowing what you couldn't do anything about just now, both of which would be risks if they took the time to fight, so he said, "Orders. I've got a job to do once I get back to the TARDIS, can't risk myself in a little skirmish." He really, really shouldn't have landed so far from the Citadel, but he'd heard they were tearing apart the TARDISes for weapons research and that had been before one of the Degradations had ripped up half the surrounding mountainside, then exploded, leaving behind ponds of glowing green goo and forcing the Doctor to take the long way back through the fields. "What about you? What are your orders, Dalek Kent?"

"TO GET DOWN HERE, FOL-LOW THIS TRENCH, AND LOSE THE ENEMY IN THE FOOT-HILLS."

The Doctor had to stop to breathe and to laugh because it was laugh or cry.

I haven't thought of Barbara in years - was she really in Rome then? Or was that part of the Neverwere?  
Really, this is unconsciously complicated, something ought to be done.

"Are you taking your orders from me?" he asked. "Oh, now that just takes the prize!" The trench was getting shallower; they'd have to break up from it soon and angle across the fields, if he was remembering the land right they should be close to the Solace foothills and it was just a short hop from there to the TARDIS and he could work out everything there, the Moment and Dalek Kent and everything else splitting his head apart...

"MY SUPER-IORS WOULD NOT GIVE ME ORDERS," the Dalek said, and its plungers drooped again. "I WAS UNFIT FOR ORDERS BECAUSE OF MY NIGHT-MARE."

"So you mentioned," the Doctor said, calculating in his head the approximate distance of the Meanwhiles from their position by the faintness of their calls - sounded like they'd gone up the other end of the trench, but they'd figure it out before long, if he fiddled with the screwdriver's settings a bit he could probably collapse the trench's walls behind them, give themselves another few moments - and then he really heard what Kent had said. "Wait, a nightmare? How could you possibly have a -"

He saw the shadow bloom across Kent's optical lens.

"Oh no," he said, "no no no no -"

"DOCTOR MY VISION IS IMPAIRED," said Dalek Kent, its voice rising with panic, "THERE IS A THING IT WILL GET ME IT WILL GET US DOCTOR HELP -" And then it was only screaming, that horrible electronic wail that Daleks had for screaming, and he could hear the bzipping Meanwhiles getting closer and purple electricity was ripping apart the smoke above them, a rift trying to open, _fuck_ this was all going to hell in a very fast handbasket, they had to get out of here and _now_.

The Doctor grabbed Kent's dome, tried to reach through it, yelling, "Ignore it! It's not real, ignore it, we have to move, that is an _order_, Dalek Kent! Ignore it and run!"

But the screaming went on and on and the Doctor couldn't get through the metal, only fragments, space and shadows and lightning storms, Kent's plungers flailing and its lights blinking wildly.

  
  
**Just doin' me bit for the war effort, guvner.**   


  
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH -"

The wail cut off; eyestalk and plungers fell; the shadow vanished from the lens.

The Doctor pulled his hands back before the Child's servant could jump to him and said, "You didn't have to do that."

  
  
**No? Well, it en't me business to meddle with yers, guvner Doctor sir, but it en't yers to meddle with mine,**   
  
  
** and the Council don't take to runnin' around with Daleks, even the ones what I've already done for.**   
  


  
"Damn you," the Doctor said. "Damn you and your business," _bzip bzip bzip_, too close now, and he said, "Make this lot part of your business then, why don't you? And drop the accent, it's a bit twee!" and then he ran again. _So sorry, Dalek Sec Caan Kent, I'm so sorry._

Hang on a minute, that's not right - I haven't met them yet, that rift must be leaking my future through...

He vaulted out of the trench and ran for the hills, he was so close now, so close, and the Meanwhiles' static had vanished - so the Nightmare Child had a scrap of decency left, did she? He would have liked to be able to say the same about himself.

Beneath his jacket the Moment pulsed.

* * *

Close was such a relative word. He'd been kind of close in the fields around the Citadel, closer yet once he'd reached the Solace foothills, so close in the foothills that in his head he had been able to see himself unlocking the TARDIS, feel the key in his hand and the splinter he'd get from the worn wood around the lock.

He was still close, relatively speaking. The TARDIS was just over the crest of the hill, parked by a copse of silverleafs and one second out of synch with time and eminently reachable. The Doctor would just have to get through the Could-Have-Been King and half his court first.

It still would have been doable if a travesty hadn't caught him in the bushes and hauled him before the King, but at the moment wishes were horses, and they all belonged to the other team.

"What a pleasure to meet you in person at last, Doctor," said the King, pacing to stand before him, and he gestured to the Meanwhiles at the Doctor's side to resume their positions within the court.

"Wish I could say the same, King."

The King ignored him, so the Doctor didn't bother to point out that while it might be the first time they'd met formally, it was far from the first time they'd seen each other, or that the Doctor had seen the King, anyway. Not that the Could-Have-Been King was much to look at; medium height, humanoid, mousy grey hair, his crown existing only in potentia - a glint of silver over one ear, a sapphire flash above his head - a thoroughly ordinary sort, if you didn't look at his hands.

"You are aware, we trust," the King said - he did have a lovely voice, the Doctor would grant him that, deep and melodious, "of the former most amicable relationship between ourselves and the Time Lords, which has been sadly unreciprocated of late. Our noble troops' sacrifices against the Daleks go unnoticed, and our strength unreplenished; the aid of our unusual friends, so vulgarly called 'travesties,' is unrewarded; we have, in short, gone grossly unappreciated."

"You have really been working on your royal language, haven't you," said the Doctor, sticking his hands in his pockets. "Just beautiful, that was. A positive inspiration."

The King glared at him, his fingers clicking against each other, and said, "What we are saying, Doctor, is that we no longer consider ourselves your allies, nor may you hope for any friendly treatment from us."

"Oh, good," the Doctor said, "I'd hate to do this to a friend," and he pulled out the sonic screwdriver, pointed, and twisted a knob.

ffssshhhssfhsshshssshhhffffsshsshfsssssshhhksshhhfffhssksssffffffsshhhhsskssfffss**ssskkhhssshsshhksssfffffssshKSSSHHHFFSSSH**

"Yes! Thank you, universe, for background radiation!" the Doctor shouted, as everything in the court with ears tried to cover them from the amplified static of the Meanwhiles' coats. "Never design an audible uniform, you'd think someone would have mentioned that earlier - good luck turning the volume down again!" And with that he took off again because half the court didn't have ears, or at least not ones sensitive to static, and they weren't wasting any time being confused by everyone else's problem but heading directly for him. He ran by the King, ducked under a tentacle, spun past three sets of reaching claws, and he was over the top of the hill and there were the trees, oh brilliant glorious amazing trees, if he'd had the time he would have kissed them but all he had time for was fiddling with the screwdriver to pull the TARDIS back into synch and he had the key in hand and then he was back inside pulling a splinter out of his thumb, fantastic! Though he was going to have to change the desktop theme again, this old thing wasn't really to his taste...

The Moment pulsed just as the TARDIS shook - he hadn't thought his little trick would hold off the court long, but a few more seconds would have been nice. He released the parking brake and danced around the central core pulling levers, miscalculating the time wasn't an issue with the war the way it was but he had to get off-planet with the Moment before someone did something the universe would regret, not that he had any suspicions of who might do such a thing, _Rassilon_.

"Come out, Doctor!" roared the King through the keyhole, all melody gone from his voice, and the TARDIS rattled, flickering white grey bronze green white again. Oooooh, he rather liked the look of the bronze, coral theme, wasn't it? "We know what you are carrying, you will hand it over to us!"

"No thank you!" the Doctor shouted back, shoving up one last lever, and the TARDIS rocketed away, headed for a spot just outside the transduction barrier and the quantum field - hah, what jokes they were now, wouldn't keep out a fly.

Once there the Doctor collapsed against one wall and let himself breathe again. Time to breathe, what a marvelous thing... Felt like he'd spent all two days of this regeneration running, it was probably a sign. He was just wondering if there might even be time for a nap when the comm screen flickered into life.

He didn't bother getting up; just closed his eyes and said, "What's the verdict, then?"

"The vote has gone against us," she said. "You'll have to use it, I'm afraid."

"I'd really rather not," said the Doctor.

"We don't have a choice. Rassilon has swayed nearly the entire Council, and his plan must not be carried out."

"Let me just come back and get you," he begged, because he hadn't reached Davros before the Child had, his home had burned, the Capitol was a nest for travesties, he had to do _something_ right. "Please, let me do that at least. Won't take but a moment and then we'll be right off -"

"No," she said, soft and resigned. "I have to stay here, you know that."

"It'll be just like old times, come on, I'll even break out the stripey pants - pretty sure I've still got 'em tucked away somewhere..."

"Oh, Grandfather," said Susan, and he could almost hear her smiling, "I think it's a bit late for that, and they wouldn't really suit you now."

"Please," he said, one last try.

"Good luck, Grandfather."

The comm screen went blank and he jumped up, filled with furious energy again, and pulled the Moment out of his jacket. Harmless little thing, it looked, just a little white ball, could've played pool with it if you didn't mind upsetting the whole time-and-space continuum but he did mind, yes he did, just a teensy bit.

"I don't want to do this," he told the TARDIS, which only flickered green light over his face. "I don't want to do this, it is _bollocks_, do you hear me? Total bollocks!"

My dear boy, we've got no choice.  
We can't allow these monstrosities to continue.  
If we could've done anything differently we would have, but we're out of time!  
You've got to do it and do it now! _Now_!

The Doctor yelled something - he would never remember what - and twisted the Moment apart and it spiraled into the air, vanishing.

The TARDIS shook a bit, adjusting to the sudden loss of a planet's worth of gravity, and then it was still.

"That's that, then," he said. He didn't bother starting up a viewscreen or looking out the window. There'd be nothing to see.

"That's done," he said, and then he wept, and the TARDIS floated on above the hole in space where their home had been.

**Author's Note:**

> Doctor Who, characters, situations, etc. © the holders of the copyright; Kent the Dalek lovingly borrowed from Eddie Izzard without permission.


End file.
